In which the reptiles show that acts of omission matter as much as vulgar photoshopped acts of commission ...

(Above: and more splendid movies from Francis Ford Rowe here).

There are a couple of wonderful matters arising from the Bronniechoppergate saga, and it's not just the chance for Rowe to show the poodle as a lap dog in the clutch bag ...

The first is the tone deaf way that Bronnie's office at first attempted to defend the expenditure, as natural and within her rights as liege dame ...

A spokesman for Mrs Bishop said on Wednesday that the trip was chartered to "meet commitments" and all travel was taken "within entitlements and in accordance with parliamentary guidelines". 
"The Speaker had a number of meetings during her visit to Victoria and always seeks to fit in as many meetings and events into her schedule as is possible," a statement read. 
"It [is] because of her concern for the country, she works as hard as she can and wishes she could do even more." (here).

That's beyond the 'patriotism is the first refuge of the scoundrel'  valley of tone deaf dumbness ...

And so the pond awoke today wondering how the reptiles would handle the scandal.

And the tone deafness continued, and the deep ideological rift, the divide in what once passed news reporting, stood revealed - and the pond remembered back in the day when everybody featured Andrew Peacock's wife's sheets (that's how they talked about wives back then, they didn't even have a first name, they were Mrs Andrew Peacockian Tail Feather Duster):

(found here).

Oh lordy lordy such sweet memories ... and then there was the colour TV saga, in April but remembered as a highlight of the year in the Sun-Herald on 26th December 1982:

Ah those were the days ...

So how have the reptiles dealt with the Bronnie saga? Well omission is as revealing as commission, and this is how the lizard Oz featured the indulgences of the rorting rich on their front page:

Sorry if you went looking, what a waste of your time ...

Oh sure if you headed off to the digital page you could cop a little snidery:

But in the generality, the omissions were wonderful to behold.

Now the pond could tediously go through all the Murdochian tabloid front pages, but the same would be true - generous acts of omission - and really how often can the pond visit the sewer and return empty handed?

Bronniechoppergate didn't exist, is nothing to worry about, doesn't mean anything, and certainly isn't worthy of a mocking front page bout of vulgar photoshopping of the low Alfred E. Newman, 'what me worry?' kind.

Now compare and contrast the Fairfaxians:

And the Herald also managed to mention Right-wing extremism equal to Muslim radicalisation: academics and police.

The reptiles had to put that story in the too hard basket too, and it's easy enough to see why - because the heartbeat of right wing extremism pounds away in the Murdochian press and the Abbott government, notorious as a hotbed of right-wing extremists:

Oh George we can believe you said that, because you're an offensive bigot.

Go on, keep on doing it:

(and more on that here).

Fellow Queensland MP Ewen Jones said he would never speak at a Reclaim Australia rally and his position is pro-immigration. 
"George is a very good friend of mine but we are very, very different people," Mr Jones said. 
"I would never speak at a Reclaim Australia rally. I believe that whatever people bring to this country, they add to it."

Um Ewen, does it worry you having a bigot as a very good friend and a work colleague?

Of course, it's the business of the reptiles to sound as positive about the hate mongers as Ewen, but getting back on topic, the pond wondered how the Bolter handled Bronniechoppergate.

Sure enough, the Bolter, who always likes to pretend he's fair and balanced - in the manner that Genghis Khan no doubt thought he was a very even-handed chappie -  came out with a belated, low key squawk later in the day:

Honour served, that was it. No raging, no repeated stomping of the feet, no hissy fits, no demanding of resignation, in short none of the suppurating rage and vile rhetoric the Bolter displayed in the Slipper matter endlessly, and at tedious length.

Little Timmy Bleagh, who fancies himself as a wit and a humourist, solved the problem by simply not mentioning Bronnie.

Which goes to show what a half-wit and a dullard he is. Why anybody and everybody was having a joke at Bronnie's expense. Some even worked big Mal into the gag:

Indeed, indeed.

So why the sensitive treatment by the reptiles?

Well Bronnie represents everything that's good and just and balanced and honest and fair and even-handed Speakerish about the Abbott government ... which explains why it's comprehensively fucked ... and if anybody poked at the house of sticks and straws they'd be reminded that Abbott once joked that he was the ideological love-child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop ...

No wonder he's such a useless bastard ...

Sadly, the noise and hubbub distracted attention from another interesting item, which was the quisling Greg Hunt finding the heat in the kitchen too much to bear, and trying to quench the flames with a token quisling offering.

It's all there in Fairfax's Greg Hunt makes Shenhua promise after fiery Alan Jones interview.

So the quisling Hunt joined Gillard in the chaff bag and was dropped somewhere in the Namoi river - yes, the pond had to endure endless nights of suffering as father and uncle went in quest of a decent Murray cod, while all the pond caught were mosquitoes ...

But is the back down meaningful? Will it result in any changes? Or will it be just another night stuck in the rich black soil of the Liverpool plains, and the farmers will have to maintain their rage?

But we digress, because there was another interesting announcement, also swept beneath the reptile carpet, which turned up on RN under the header NSW Farmers Association shifts position on climate change - with bonus audio but no useless apostrophe ...

And Fairfax noted it too, here:

The NSW Farmers Association ended its annual conference on Wednesday by voting to remove clauses in its official policy that had called for a royal commission "to explore the scientific veracity and soundness of claims that carbon is a pollutant" and to investigate "whether the activities of mankind are responsible for causing any change". 
In their place, members voted to replace those calls with a recognition that primary producers "are on the front lines of seasonal variability, exacerbated by a changing climate". 
...The rejected clauses – inserted between 2008 and 2011 – were "archaic" and the strong support for their replacement "shows farmers really are the forefront of climate change and really care", said Josh Gilbert, chair of the Young Farmers Council, which put forward the amendments. 
Mr Gilbert, whose parents farm cattle near Foster on the Mid North Coast, said farmers were already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate. 
"We see pests and parasites coming down from Queensland becoming more prevalent," he said, adding increased flooding was another change associated with the warming conditions. 
NSW Farmers also approved a policy change that called on governments to back "the transition from fossil fuels such as coal and gas, towards more renewable energy sources in rural, regional and remote areas" provided there is a "net benefit to farming communities". 
Farmers have stepped up their opposition to major coal mining or coal seam gas activities in NSW, particularly in wake of last week's decision by federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt to approve the $1.7 billion Shenhua open-cut coal mine in the rich Liverpool Plains farming region of northern NSW.

So that's where the quisling Hunt has landed. The farmers are revolting ... and what's more they decided to be revolting just at the time when there's ice and cold and snow in the land.

Which shows that the farmers have a little more clue than little Timmie Bleagh, that notorious half-wit doing his usual half-witted attempts at humour, without realising that there was a treasure trove of Bronnie jokes within his child-like reach:

Hey little Timmie, look where the scientific reports are falling:

It's in the Graudian here, with a link to the actual report, but let's do a little Timmie cherry picking and hope the result isn't up to his mindless stupidity:

The report underlined 2014 as a banner year for the climate, setting record or near record levels for temperature extremes, and loss of glaciers and sea ice, and reinforcing decades-old pattern to changes to the climate system. 
Four independent data sets confirmed 2014 as the hottest year on record, with much of that heat driven by the warming of the oceans.

And so on and so forth, but meanwhile, Bronnie has done her duty and provided a mindless distraction of the Marie Antoinette kind ... though an unkind sexist might note that Marie Antoinette looked a little more scrumptious when she ordered the chopper to take her from Paris to Versailles and back each day ...

Hey, it's only 28 kim and 40 mins via the Voie Georges Pompidou and the pond only caught the train, but Marie would be right on board, catching that chopper with Bronnie, instead of doing the 75 clicks on the road ...

Meanwhile, speaking of other matters routinely swept under the gulag carpet ...

(Below: and more Moir here).